Tag Archives: philippine independent cinema

kultura

on class, the indie film divide, and what unity must mean

the breakdown and aftermath of the Rafael Santos debacle is interesting to me mostly for what’s still unsaid.

1. the fact of Santos’ class, and i use that word not just to point to his lack of social skills (for goodness why would he think a joke like that funny?) and bad manners (he was asked about actors he himself worked with for his film, yes?), but also his social class. that humor, if we’d like to call it that, is one that we know exists, that we might have heard before from rowdy boys in some sosy Starbucks, or kids we’ve taught in our time as teachers, and it’s a humor that isn’t surprising in its existence. what is surprising is that Santos did not turn it off for television, that he actually thought this was an interview that would be so comfortable, his humor would be fine. which bring us back to the fact that he might be a rich kid — a konyo kid in our context who feeds his cat catfood and thinks lowly of skyflakes (equals 1 cup of rice kaya and isang pack no’n!) — but apparently rich doesn’t mean classy.

2. which is what that show Cityscape is, more pang-mayaman than anything. Sir Anton Juan is so correct about pointing out how that host is at fault as well, though there’s the mere existence of lifestyle shows for the elite like this one that’s just wrong in third world Philippines. that show, as is David Celdran’s ANC show, is a bubble that allows the ones who are in it to believe that everyone speaks the same language, thinks the same, live the same, i.e., we’re all rich, you’ll get my humor. is this to defend Santos? of course not. it’s to point out that other than this articulation, there’s a fundamental problem in a media system that creates a venue for him to speak this way, and think that it’s ok. it’s telling of a crisis in media, isn’t it, when the rich can be shameless about their lives and lifestyles, as if they were not in impoverished philippines?

3. some critics of Santos are angry because he draws a divide between film and theater. i say it’s a reminder: despite Eugene Domingo, John Lapus moving from theater to film, and despite numerous mainstream actors moving from mainstream and finding more credibility in theater, that divide still exists. and it’s one that’s painfully and obviously about money, i.e., who will make money for TV and movie executives and therefore will get better pay, and not at all about who does the better job at acting or entertaining.

now that divide gets a little more complex when we talk about the indie film industry of which Santos is part. the indie in fact is theater in light of commercial film; it’s where the more artistic, more creative filmmaking happens, where the better actors are found. i always thought the indie employing theater actors meant a team effort of sorts, one that spoke of both industries’ struggle to prove creativity on the most flimsy of budgets, on a dire lack of support. Santos’ articulation pointed to the fact that the indie film industry has it’s own divide to deal with, and it’s one that’s becoming more and more stark as they go about this business of being “independent.” while it’s true that there are countless writers and directors who financially struggle to get a hold of a camera and finish a film, it’s also difficult to ignore this fact: there are also these kids who go to some sosyal film school, are given cameras on a silver platter and think the struggle is just like wow pare, it’s so hard to make the film i want, coz i want to do a tarantino film or like a kubrick? and the philippines is so not prepared for me.

wow pare, ang tindi ng struggle mo.

4. and lastly, Tanghalang Pilipino’s artistic director Nanding Josef wonders:

And it also makes me wonder what the outsiders, the ‘uzis’ (mga usisera), the non-artists and the critics of the artists make out of this free-for-all, uncensored and free-flowing downpour of expletives, name-calling by the artists against another artist, albeit a beginning artist.

here’s what i think, Sir: while i’ve got a brother and sister-in-law who were part of theater in the Philippines before they left for Holland, and while i’d like to think myself a theater critic at times (though i cringe at that label half the time, especially with gibbs cadiz and exie abola around), as outsider to philippine theater, i think this emotional outpouring of anger and disgust at the issues that underlie Santos’ articulations is the perfect reason to start talking about a theater actors’ union.*

of course in this country insisting on a union is a red flag up for the powers-that-be. but seeing the theater industry’s united stand against this articulation (even those who have forgiven Santos admit to his fault here), i think the theater world’s 100 steps ahead of the fight for what every creative industry worker deserves: a spanking-new union.

the writers among us can only be envious.

 

*and i mean a real one, not like the UMPIL for writers, which doesn’t really function to protect writers or standardize how much we might get paid, but seems more like a fraternity of writers. i mean a real artists’ union, much like the Philippine Models Association of the Philippines (yes, they are smarter than us all), that standardizes pay based on seniority and skill of their members, and is responsible for any of its members not performing their jobs well.

kultura

Layang Bilanggo frees us from the indie!

the discussions and debates on local indie films come from a place of uncertainty and spectatorship: who views these films, and therefore are we making them for those viewers? is the prevalence of sex and poverty and violence in the indie something that’s overly used to feed the first world’s need to validate themselves?  after all to insist on seeing the bowels of third world Philippines and saying bravo bravo! could also mean yehey! they’re still as poor as we’d like to think!

and then there are stories that are about poverty with some violence and some sex, that just get out of the rut that too many indie films are in. Layang Bilanggo directed by Michael Angelo Dagñalan and written by him with Ma-an L. Asuncion, Melchor DF. Escarcha (Kuwentista Productions), is exactly this story, without it being too self-consciously pa-artist or pa-difficult. instead what it is becomes what an indie should be able to do: speak of the times in a way that deems it as important as the past and the future, in situations that might be cliché but which are handled with a new perspective and a different voice.

because on the one hand, it’s clear that we know of the ex-con story, yet we rarely speak of how corruption within the police allows for the probability that the ex-con is freed, kept under the radar, and used as a hitman. because on the one hand, we’ve seen the story of the ex-con father seeking the abandoned child, yet we don’t know of the probability that this child’s life is so affected by the palpable absence that abandonment creates, making a reunion just impossible.

in Layang Bilanggo this basic story has a layer of what is both funny and tragic about age and aging, within the spaces of a provincial home for the aged, where the exchanges between nurses and boarders are always truthfully painful, making fun as they do of the absurd situation(s) that aging creates, that those who think they haven’t aged actually subsist on. it’s difficult now to think of any movie or TV show that has dealt with senior citizenship in the way that Layang Bilanggo successfully did, where the conversations, the moments of distress and anger, the emotional rollercoaster that abandonment and loneliness wreaks, are all so real. if not in our faces, reminding us of our own inabilities and incapabilities, reminding us how much of ourselves is in the ways in which we let our old get old, our senior citizens deal with age by themselves.

having said this, it must be said too: Jaime Fabregas, Pocholo Montes, Pen Medina, outdo themselves in the roles of senior citizenship, where the witty repartee is layered with a whole lot of disgust and distress at the way(s) they’ve aged, and why they’re within the space they’re in, where friendships are tongue in cheek, where the end is dealt with as a matter of fact, and not as something that’s unsaid.

that later on it is the ex-Metrocom officer who helps out the ex-con, that later on, this friendship will be tested in the decision to be captured again, do not run away it is said, becomes one of the more touching moments in the film. soon after, we are faced with an ending we don’t like or want or expect, and yet seems to be the only way a movie like this could end, with redemption only in the way of death, only the way that the person who survives holds a gun to someone’s head, and runs away through the forests that are unfamiliar.

and on concrete lies the man who only wanted to be forgiven, more for the crime that is abandonment versus any other one that the law speaks of. down the street, an old man is reading what’s left of the one who could only be a father until the end. within the gates of the old people’s home, a daughter doesn’t know the truth just yet, and will die a couple of deaths upon finding out who her father is.

and right in front of the movie screen, as the strains from the Johnoy Danao original theme song began, it was difficult to hold back tears. because there is no redemption, there is no happy ending. all that there is, we realize, is a world where abandonment is truth but rarely spoken of, a space where love can only be possible given a blanket of lies, where fathers and daughters are unbound but aren’t free, and the freedom we seek isn’t about walls or limits, but about what we aren’t allowed to become given the past we cannot shake off, given the future that can only be uncertain.

and then we realize that maybe the point isn’t to forget, nor is it to be forgiven. the point is to live now, and know to look peace in the eye, and take it on, even when we have yet to think we deserve it. the universe has its own way of judging us worthy. and letting us free.

***

note number 1: Layang Bilanggo won the Cinema One Originals 2010 best picture and best screenplay, with its director winning best director and lead actor winning best actor. and yes, the redundancy is killing me. Miriam Quiambao deserves some praise for acting that was truthful, she seems to be over her learning curve. Pen Medina as lead actor here isn’t just the best, he outdoes himself too, requiring a whole lot of bad words that only the most admirable would know to be about being overwhelmed.

note number 2: the last day of the the Cinema One Originals 2010 film fest was on a non-working holiday (November 16), and the filled theaters for Third World Happy and Dagim were unexpected for someone like me who’s been watching in half-filled theaters for most of the festival. suffice it to say that i was happy for these indie movies, but sad that i didn’t get to watch both movies.

kultura

the saddest of dreams in Ang Damgo ni Eleuteria

on the surface, there isn’t much to deal with in the movie Ang Damgo ni Eleuteria written and directed by Remton Siega Zuasola (Panumduman Pictures). it is the story of Terya and her family’s struggle with her impending departure for Germany to marry an old man found through a mail-order bride service in her province of Cebu. the struggle begins and ends in Olango Island where she and her family live, one of those islands that’s removed from the cities that are familiar to us from Manila, a space that reminded me of Cuyo Palawan in the indie Ploning.  we see this stretch of space, with idle land and waters as two things: on the one hand the place of a rut, the rut that Terya’s mother speaks of; on the other, the space of possibility — surrounded by waters there is reason to leave, go with the tide, let it bring you elsewhere.

but Terya didn’t want to leave. the story begins with Terya missing, pretend-drowning in water, or maybe really wanting to drown herself, and her mother screaming at her father for having lost her. the father meanwhile is a funny guy, cracking jokes but also making fun of his wife, in the midst of the crisis that was in front of them, the one that involves the daughter who just refused to eat, refused to speak, refused refused refused.

save for showing tenderness and love for the younger sister, the one who didn’t know what was going on for most of the movie, but turned out to be crucial. save for showing compassion and friendship for the crazy man of the town, the one who was the literal crazy in the midst of the Baliw-Baliw Festival that the town was celebrating with, what else, but a bunch of crazy boys making like they’re pregnant women.

in the midst of this, Terya and her family kept on walking walking walking. the beauty of this movie lies in the fact that we don’t even realize how far they’ve walked, or how long. the point being this: Terya had walked from saying no to leaving, to saying yes. she had walked from the space that was familiar, to one that was unfamiliar and scary. she had walked from what was hers, to what she did not know.

in the course of this walk Terya meets up with the boy she loved and who loved her back. she thought of going off to elope, and then backs out: the town wants to talk to her, wants to say goodbye. she’s leaving, she’s one of them, and she’s leaving to become somebody else. her parents look for her and find her, but do not know her. the recruiter thinks she’s like every other girl who’s ready to leave, ready to become rich and send her family money. she doesn’t realize Terya can walk with no slippers, and can walk in her mother’s slippers, as her mother walks barefoot, hot concrete notwithstanding.

this heat was something that the visitor would complain about. but Terya and her family took it as default. on screen, the heat translates to an unbelievable brightness, as if we are being made to see this stark reality of making our young women’s bodies an export product, as if we are being made to see this spotlight on what is a sad sad dream of leaving. as if we are being challenged with its absurdity, if not its insanity.

because there is a dreamlike quality to this the story of Terya. the camera moves with the walking, moves with the people whose roles are important and relevant to Terya’s leaving, with the community small and impoverished and “crazy” as it was as they walked through it. the camera is always in the people’s faces, or highlights a group dynamic. the discomforts within the family, the refusal to deal with the recruiter, the need for Terya to stand with an old friend from school and reckon with both past and future in the face of her present, all telling of the kind of life she was to live, she was to leave.

when Terya finally gets on that boat that was to bring her to the city then to Germany, she is sent off by family, by a friend who’s just passing through, by a cousin who’s done it before and wants her to know it will be hard. and the town’s crazy sends her off, scaring the recruiter who stands for everything that’s horrid about the business of sending our people elsewhere. Terya is made to look at her small provincial town as the boat floats away, as they are all forced to see her leave.

and when the little sister looks to her ate with only the innocent sadness that the young can have, what could only become sadder is the mother telling her to grow up quickly so she can leave, too. and then you know that the mother’s dream, the family’s dream, that which Terya decided to fulfill as her dream, is the whole town’s dream.

it’s the saddest of dreams that we’ve come to think right and just, even when what it actually is, is tragic. and in Ang Damgo ni Eleuteria we are reminded of all this, without being all about poverty and oppression, because it actually also is ultimately about dreams. that one that’s about leaving to live and sacrificing self to survive. this movie reminds us that this is a dream we cannot begrudge the dreamer, a dream we cannot judge. and there is also our tragic existence as the ones who watch it happen.

kultura

impotence in Astro Mayabang

Jason Paul Laxamana was obviously overwhelmed when he welcomed the audience to the gala screening of his movie Astro Mayabang, as was the crowd most of whom were in t-shirts with the movie’s title, Philippine flags (which i couldn’t understand), and banners for Aaron Villaflor who plays the title role. this is the difference between an indie with Ronnie Lazaro and an indie with a young commercial star.

i would wear a t-shirt with Ronnie Lazaro’s name anytime.

maybe Aaron Villafor’s name too, but let me give him a couple more indie films, and a decade more? in the movies. because if there’s anything that saves this movie it’s Aaron’s existence as Astro Mayabang. he is effective as the Kapampangan boy who walks in no direction other than the literal, who lives the days one at a time, who only cares for nation in as superficial a way as wearing his shoes. Aaron here is actually a surprise given his youth, and it was difficult not to feel for him when things fell apart, and think him crazy by the time the story ended.

and yes, i get ahead of the story because other than what happens, there isn’t much to say about this story other than it is brave, yes, in its use of Pampanga as context, the Kapampangan language throughout the movie, a look at contemporary Kapampangan culture. that is what’s brave about this movie. but the storytelling, the narrative, the world that was of Astro Mayabang’s, living in the bowels of Kapampangan society, is farthest from being special.

it’s like a soap opera really. Astro has a drunkard father and catatonic mother, one friend, a tiny room, and too many Pinoy pride paraphernalia. but what he owns figuratively is the park and people’s attention: Astro is called mayabang for a reason. he talks about his sexual experiences with the other park tambays, he fights with a white guy who refuses to give a beggar some coins, dances in the middle of the park by himself, makes and flies a kite like he owns the place. he walks through the streets as if he owns it, scolds the boy at the pirated dvd stall for not having more OPM, is easily irritated and seems to always be in a rush. which is a surprise because Astro Mayabang actually has nothing urgent going on in his life, save for buying Pinoy pride merchandise to celebrate his, uh, Pinoy pride.

but easily the question has to be about money and where he gets it, and in this movie Astro earns it via a relationship with a homosexual man who does nothing but sit in front of his laptop playing games. periodically, a man dressed as a holy week ritual flagellation sacrifice arrives in a mask, no shirt and loose pants, dances for him and gets some viagra. and always, after these instances, Astro holds money in his hands. of course this masked man is Astro, but that was suppose to be a surprise later on in the story, when Astro actually comes not for the money but for the viagra because he’s got a girl Dawn who he met in the park (where else?), and the movie reveals that he’s actually impotent. of course as with the masked dancing boy, this too was suppose to be a surprise. but given the way the story was told here, none of it was.

there was no big reveal here, and that is what made the story impotent. it could not be anything other than a superficial story about a boy who’s mayabang, who has a false sense of nationalism, and a false sense of his value to the world, and whose motivations are unclear, his anger at the Lord unexplained. when Dawn talks to Astro and tells him being Pinoy ain’t about what clothes one wears, and what one says, because what matters is what’s in the heart, this is almost an explanation for the movie’s whole point, and yet.

and yet, it also seemed so pointless here because when Dawn finally articulates these smart words (no matter that they are cliche), it’s barely important in the face of their hormones, the possibilities in an empty house, and Astro’s, uh, extra challenge of impotence. then it just become absurd: Astro travels from one end of the city to another, gets some viagra from gay fag then leaves him waiting, goes back to the other side of the city, forces Dawn to get it on with him because he’s ready, and suddenly a fight scene: Dawn throws him out of the house, he asks for everything he ever gave her, including a tiny bag of butong pakwan. and then Astro’s already non-life falls apart: he wants one of the limited edition jackets at the Pinoy pride store, finds out that the old fag now doesn’t care for him, he gets into a fight with the other boys in the fag’s house, loses the money he had to buy the t-shirt with, all this come to a head and he breaks down, tearing off all the posters of world famous Pinoys from his room’s walls, screaming “Wala ka, Astro!” over and over again, at some point hitting his thighs hard over and over again.

then Pacquiao has a fight, but he isn’t there. he’s in church talking to God saying that he’s unfair because he didn’t create men equal. and cut to next scene: the park, people murmuring about Astro, and him as loud as always, talking about the Lord. yabang transformed into preaching.

the point of course is that Astro shifted gods from nation to, well, God. the point of course is that he has found himself, but at this point this cannot be literal at all. it just becomes as absurd as the rest of the movie. and i don’t mean that in a good way.

kultura

When Indie Fails

a version of this was published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, April 7 2010.

There are many things to say about the movie Red Shoes (directed by Raul Jorolan, written by James Ladioray), but it’s definitely not that it’s the year’s first best movie. Because this is nowhere near as good as Unitel Pictures’ other films (Inang Yaya, Pinoy Blonde, La Visa Loca, Crying Ladies), and nowhere close to being great at anything. In fact, to a certain extent, it is no better than the commercial romance movies that our film production outfits churn out. To a certain extent, we are reminded that a good premise is not what a good movie makes, nor is it in the mere fact of using the label indie, i.e., independent film.

In truth, the only thing Red Shoes ends up becoming is a montage of various stories that are not well woven together into the narrative that it makes its main protagonist, Lucas (Marvin Agustin), tell. But this is getting ahead of the story, or in Red Shoes’ case, ahead of the many stories here. (more…)